Family
by WouldItMatter
Summary: Because that's what it was really about. They had fought for so long... so long. Hagoromo had learned from watching his children for millennia as they just kept fighting even through death itself. Their feud had no end. He would end their fighting, he would reconcile with his mother, he would do what needed to be done. As Hagoromo he failed, so he would succeed as Naruto.


The moon called to me unlike anything else in my vision as it cleared. My vision remained half-lidded, carefree, calm. All I could see was the moon, and all I could feel was the majestic rock's call within my chest. It was the most complex thing I had ever encountered in my… my time. Why can't I think… What's… The moon called me again. I hadn't taken my eyes off of it but it seemed that it wanted my thoughts as well. That was fine by me, I was content to investigate this complexity within my chest. It was so indescribably unique.

The moon shouldn't have emotions, of this I'm certain, and yet its call was the most emotive thing I have ever experienced. It felt distinctly worried. It felt distinctly angry. It felt distinctly happy. It felt distinctly sad. It felt distinctly cautious. It felt distinctly… feminine.

_A drop._

I blinked, my focus taken away from the moon by the sudden moisture in between my eyes. I tracked the feeling of liquid as it advanced upon the battlefield of my face, making a daring push through the territory of my skin and claiming land with each battle. A siege. I giggled. It was funny. Wasn't it? Was it?

I could feel the liquid fall off of my face as I scrunched my brows in confusion and tightened my eyelids over my eyes, darkening my vision into a blurring splatter of color that sprinkled across my mind and prompted flashes of thought. It was so very tiring, I admit. I opened my eyes and stopped the assault on my mind nearly as fast as I had allowed it to occur.

_A drop._

Ah, that liquid again. I giggled as I felt it travel down the very same path carved out on my skin by its predecessor. Well, that was a… what was that word that… someone used. Ah! Hahaha… it was a novel thought! Wasn't it? Was it?

It was… novel… the way most things followed the path set out for them by their predecessors. It was always harder to set a new path, and certainly scarier. I chuckled, an airy sound I realize, as I felt the liquid follow its parent droplet along the very same path all the way to the very same death: a plummet from my jawbone to the ground. I could _hear _it. Liquid was so unique in the way it sounded. It had its own echo. It sounded heavy too. Distinctly metallic.

Finally the moon relented and allowed my eyes to deter from its gaze. I slumped forward with entirely too much weight and nearly fell over, forcing my hands to catch my weight. My right hand with a sort of squelching sound when it hit the floor… the wooden floor? My house had wood floors… my… house? Wha-

I dragged my hand up as I dragged my body up through a rigid lower back flex. I felt the way my musculature crunched together as my spine unfurled and straightened out upwards. I could feel the way something inside of me was writhing around and building, stretching across the vast expanse of muscle and bone and tissue and skin, spreading its influence like a guiding hand telling my body how to move. I could feel the way my muscles now tensed and untensed, flexing in some unknowable pattern, something they had never done before. I stopped caring and instead moved my focus to my hand as I dragged it upwards to inspect its palm.

Red, warm. Entirely too metallic. I could _smell _the metal in it. What was this? I moved my hand around to allow the moonlight to reflect off of it in different angles, and I could _see _the way the very same thing writhing around inside of me and building and building and building and building and building was writhing around in the liquid, and _dying and dying and dying and dying _so very fast. A sudden fear enveloped my chest and I could feel the way that same stuff that was writhing and building within me suddenly seized upon my emotion and held stiffly.

I wanted to save this dying thing. To see it _writhe and build _instead of _writhe and __**die. **_

I could feel the way my own writhing thing shifted and swarmed up my hand with a feverish fanaticism. Fanaticism? Feverish? What did those…

I watched the way this _writhing and dying _thing sunk into my skin, pulled along by my own _writhing and building _thing to begin to build on its own. Seeing the two of them this close, they were different colors! I laughed at my realization, and with my laugh I could feel the way this writhing thing within me heaved with each action. I sighed in contentment as this other thing, distinctly a little duller than what was within me, suddenly gained hue and… hue?... grew as bright as what was within me, and miraculously, began to build just as well!

My chest swelled with the realization and relieved the pressure on me with an airy giggle. I watched it join within my chest and begin to build with everything else as if it had always been there. I smiled, patting my chest with a slight frown at the way this red, _dead, _thing smeared across my shirt.

"You're a weird one." A voice, low and scary, from above. I looked up above and felt the way my flesh formed a neat little pillow for my head and the way my jaw slacked from the effort of keeping my mouth shut being too much. I pictured my face… no, I didn't, that wasn't my, my face… was it?… what? I pictured an expression, a small opening for my mouth and entirely too wide eyes staring upwards. I smiled softly at my own image, if… if that was my own.

"And now you're smiling. Great." The man, that's what he was I think, was big. Much bigger than me, I think. He had a hulking figure, and yet he looked malnourished. Mal… what? He looked like he hadn't eaten in weeks with the way his skin was so tight around his eyes and he had no flesh to cover his cheekbones. He hadn't slept in what must of been a month or so for his eyes to be so blood red and practically leaking… sleep depravity… madness… which was it?... from them. Half-lidded as his eyes were the tiny red lines that were scattered all across the whites of his eyes were glaringly obvious. Glaringly? Wasn't a glare the way something looked at you?

I just looked up at him without saying anything. What would I say? Was there even anything worth saying? I noticed the way he tilted his head at me while looking entirely unimpressed with me, before a simple shrug of his shoulders made that stuff in my writhe in what looked to be absolute _**agony. **_Unbridled… unbridled?... and utter, absolute, resolute, determined, complete… _**ANGER**_… absolutely tore through this writhing… thing… inside of me. I didn't know why. This feeling, this anger that was coming, that wasn't _mine… _or was it?... was entirely foreign. Yes, foreign, right? I didn't know what it was, I hadn't… met, no… I hadn't, known? I hadn't known such anger within me before. What was so bad about a shrug of his shoulders?

Suddenly the thing within me _surged _to the side of my face and pushed my head to the left. I complied and found a piece of metal in a triangular shape shimmering in the moonlight. More of that red liquid from before was dripping quickly off of the tip of it into a pool on the floor. I could see the stuff in it, dead and unmoving. The pool of the liquid, the stuff in it was… going into the ground? It was turning green! Woah!

I looked up to the man with a giggle and stared at him.

"It's green!" My voice was rather high pitched and I could see the way the screech pierced the man's eyes and made his skin curl in on itself into a snarl. My giggle died and my smile unfurled in response to his anger.

"Grrraghhh… kill a kid's parents and he starts acting fucking weird huh? Fuck I am _so _not goin' for anyone with kids next time. Fucking, god you're annoying. Not even fuckin' fun to mess with." I stared up at the man's face and watched as it contorted and twisted into some sort of irritation as I felt my own churn into confusion. Kill… parents? What did he mean?

I dropped my head and looked around. I was in a house, my house?, and strewn across the floor were two bodies that were leaking far more of that red liquid with the dull stuff swarming around inside of it. I could feel the way the weight of a thousand little pieces of knowledge _fell _onto my head and spewed out of my eyes, widening them and dropping my jaw. My expression was that of… horror? What was to be horrified about? They were… no not they, I knew them, I could _feel _it. They, they, THEY THEY THEY THEY, _**KAMI BE DAMNED REMEMBER THEM. **_

They were dead. Whoever they were. These dead things, they died. As all things do. As all things… should? I felt, I think that is the right answer. I… I could see the way that writhing thing in them was fighting for its life in an utterly unwinnable battle. It would… lose. Why was loss such a hollow feeling? Even the word, loss, it… what did it do? What… my head…

My parents. They are my… parents. What, who…

The moon snapped my head upwards. A knife was dangling above my eyes, suspended in space. Suspended, suspended sus-

"What the fuck, What the, what, what are you," The man above me groaned and _roared _as he gripped at the knife with both hands, heaving his entire weight backwards against the knife hovering above my pupil. It wouldn't move, I knew this. He was fighting an utterly unwinnable battle. He would… lose. His loss filled me with… something. It wasn't hollow. Why was loss such a wholesome feeling? Even the word, loss, it… no, that wasn't right was it? Learning is hard.

"What the, your fucking eyes… WHAT ARE YOU!?" The man screamed. Through the reflection in his eye, I could see with such clarity. I had never seen anything like this.

My eye, it was a single black dot in an expanse of white. Just my pupil. My blue… were they blue?... irises had faded and bled into nothing. I smiled. Maybe the blue had fed the sky for a little while, kept its nice blue hue for everyone else. Yes.

I watched as my pupil shrunk in on itself, through this reflection on the man's eye, and watched and watched and watched as it… pulsed?... yeah, I think that's right. My pupil pulsed outwards across my… eye… I think I could be more specific but, I don't know… it pulsed across my eye in thin, con… con… concentric?... concentric lines that settled slowly across this expanse of white.

I watched with otherworldly focus the way an absolutely _**gorgeous **_violet spread across from my pupil and met the ends of my eyes with an absolutely _**loving **_embrace. I felt… I felt whole. I could, I could _see _again. I could, I could move. I could, I could,

_**I could see her, staring at me. **_

She looked so happy, from her spot in the moon. She was crying. I could just… I just knew. She mouthed something to me, but I didn't know what she said. A voice in my head, elderly and knowledgeable and… me. Me. I spoke to myself.

'_Shinra Tensei.' _He… no… I fed myself the words I needed. I fed myself, I fed…

This writhing thing in me, I could _feel _it now. It absolutely _exploded _outward from my chest. My core. My… its chakra. Its Chakra! Hahahaha! I had chakra! I forgot how wonderful this feeling was! Wait, no, I had always-

My house exploded.


End file.
